Delaware man is of­fer­ing meat for gas money

Mys­tery man’s ‘meat and greet’ is caus­ing con­cern

Have you met the ‘meat man?’ Delaware po­lice say they’ve iden­tified the man who’s ask­ing for gas money in ex­change for the meat he’s keep­ing in the back of his SUV. They haven’t found him yet, but they’re look­ing to meet him.

It was about 7:30 p.m. Wed­nes­day when the man walked into Heart and Home gift shop on Lime­stone Road and ap­proached a young sales clerk, ac­cord­ing to po­lice. The man needed money for gas, he told her, and asked whether she would like to come out to his SUV and get some meat.

“Our con­cerns were for our young sales as­so­ciate,” said the store’s comeat owner, Nina Sneeringer.

“We’re in an ex­tremely safe area, but there are a few creeps out there.”

The young lady told the man no, Sneeringer said, and the older sales as­so­ciate work­ing that night dou­bled down on that: The an­swer was no, and she threat­ened to call se­cu­rity.

A state po­lice spokes­woman said the sit­u­a­tion was re­ported and troop­ers started to look for the mys­tery meat man be­cause of his sus­pi­cious be­hav­ior. She said it was es­pe­cially trou­ble­some that he claimed to be out of gas but drove away once he was chased off.

“He gave me a cou­ple pork chops,” Bran­nock said. “Some type of steak, I think it was like a flank steak or some­thing. And then he gave me some sausages,”

Bran­nock was gassing up at the Royal Farms on Kirk­wood High­way about three weeks ago when the same man in pho­tos cir­cu­lated by state po­lice ap­proached him, he said.

“He just asked me if I could spare any money for gas and made it clear he could give me meat,” Bran­nock said. “I’m usu­ally not the type of per­son to buy into that stuff, but he looked like an av­er­age guy . ... It was very weird. I was hon­estly re­ally con­fused.”

Bran­nock said there re­ally was no rea­son for the man to give him any meat.